I cut the chord back in April, and after a few bumps I've found my groove. I'm not claiming to have the best setup, nor am I saving the most money. But after a few investments, I'll save about $600 a year off my Dish contact. In fairness them, they did offer me their 200+ lineup, DVR, 1 year service $50 to stay. That was quite tempting, but I passed. I had been paying $150 a month for TV, internet, DVR, and Netflix. Now I pay about $95 for internet, Netflix, Hulu, Fight Network, and Channel Pear, and we never run out of content. That doesn't include my Android box that runs Kodi, and all the stuff on there. I've read that more folks would leave cable if they have a viable option for sports, and Kodi is full of it. There are several free sports add-ons like SportsDevil, Vid Time, Ultimate IPTV, and Cast Away, and they work pretty well. I've discovered a couple subscription add-ons that inexpensive and stream in 720 P; Sports Donkey and Sports Mania do a fabulous job and I have more to watch than ever. Finally let's talk TV antenna and PVR service. Initially I bought a Mohu Sky 60 after reading review after review about how great and reliable it was. I had nothing but problems with it and it's terrible reception. I live less than 40 miles from the furthest broadcast tower, and had it mounted 15 feet above my roof. Despite call after call and readjusting all the freaking time, it never got NBC or PBS, and often dropped ABC. I finally had enough and bought a 70 mile range antenna from RCA, and on the first mount got 53 channels including NBC ABC and PBS! I haven't had any issues since. Finally, I added View TV PVR for recording live TV and games. There's no compression when you record, so get a large USB hard drive. So while it hasn't paid off this year, I should rack up some great savings next year. I've showed my setup to several pals, and all were impressed; 2 of them have switched as well. I'll never say never, but I can't imagine what it would take for me to go back cable or satellite TV. I probably have too many options, but why settle as a chord cutter?
Sunday, October 2, 2016
Wednesday, August 3, 2016
So Tired Of The Fight
I hate my job, and I'm sure others feel that way as well. While nobody is shooting bullets at me, I am miserable but can't quit. I must hang on for the family, because of my responsibilities to them. 2 kids are in college and 2 more right behind them. I'd like to think I'm trusting in the Lord during this trial, but I am not. In fact I've lost some of my faith, because of the last 15 months of work hell. I try to keep everything to myself, because I don't want to drag anyone down; wife & kids shouldn't have to worry. I have a brother who works extremely hard for minimum wage; he'd love to make what I do. I am trapped and ready to quit at any minute; my resignation is ready to print. I've started looking for another job, because I cannot continue this. It will impact my family greatly to go from +$20 a hour to whatever u end up. Will J & Rx be able to go to college if I do this? With no hope in sight I've thought about bumping up the life insurance and checking out. I haven't had serious thoughts, and that's more stupidity and selfish in my part. I'm hoping to find a new position that gives me the ability to provide for my family, and releases me from the clutches of depression I now find myself in. Lord, I'm ashamed I've stop trusting in you, but I'm so tired of this.
Sunday, July 24, 2016
Kodi/XBMC Paid Addons Reviews: SportsAccess, Sports Donkey, and SportsMania
So after years of paying anywhere from $60 to $85 a month for cable or satellite tv, I finally followed my pal @Vandy4Life and cut the cord back in April; actually he's only been a Vandy fan 15 years, but that's another story. Anyway, I had discovered XBMC/Kodi about 3 years ago. At first I found it confusing, frustrating, and annoying. I actually quit using, because I didn't understand the whole repository thing. So happens I was shopping in the Opry Mills Mall, when someone at the Game-stop store had a homemade XBMC shirt. I struck up a conversation, and he was like dude just YouTube it. That I did, and after that I completely fell in love with XBMC. This was my first baby steps in cord cutting, that lead to where I am now. At the time, I mainly used it for tv shows and movies, but there were some live streaming addons as well; I might be misspelling addons. Mashup, SportsDevil, and Navi-X were the main ones I used, and I basically watching sub-links on Mashup. As with all things in life things evolve, change, and sometimes goes away.
XBMC evolved into Gotham, Isengard, Helix, and its now morphed into Kodi; not addon continued. This was the case for my beloved Mashup, because I think around 18 to 24 months ago the developer shut it down. The bulk of my live streaming went down with it, and caused me to research other addons to replace it. I tried so many different free addons, but most of them were just meh. I still to this day can't remember how I stumbled across it, but somehow I found the Hqzone. This started my journey into paid streaming addons for Kodi. They had some 1 week trial I signed up for, and they did have better quality than the free ones. As I seriously thought about subscribing, I research similar addons. I noticed a little Twitter war between the Zone and Sports Access. SA might have been called something else then, but that's what it is now; also found Sports Donkey and later Sports Mania.
So I've board you to death with my journey to this point, so for the rest of my blog I want to compare Sports Access, Sports Donkey, and Sports Mania in terms of product, service, and value. These are only my opinions, but I think you'll find them valid. So I'll start with my the first ever service I committed to Sports Access https://twitter.com/NoBuffZone . The current cost is around $160 dollars a year, but they do offer a Black Friday special around $100 for a 1 year subscription. The service has really evolved from 20 to 30 channels to around 70 at the moment. They have all the big UFC, PPV, and huge sporting events. During football season, they have all the NFL games each week and a huge selection of college games. The same can be said for racing, tennis, golf, MMA, basketball and pro baseball. They have all the major sports channels, and even some regular tv channels: HBO, Showtime, and several other cable channels. They best thing is there's little to no buffering on their streams. I can go the entire even without one hiccup on most occasion. I've been a subscriber for about 20 months, and they've had a few outages from time to time. I think last year they were down for about a month, which lead me to my second service Sports Donkey.
I had read several good reviews about Sports Donkey and with SA down, I decided to try it http://www.sportsdonkey.club/ . For around $60 a year, they have a lot of content and most of the events Sports Access has. They have a huge selection of American sports, but maybe a little more of the Euro stuff with their streams. They too have Showtime, HBO, and all the major sporting events as well. They offer a lot of variety, but their streams will buffer more frequently than SA. I've watched several MLB games and UFC events on it with little issue. Overall, its a great value and they haven't had any outages that I know of. Finally, the last add on I've tried is SportsMania.eu . I came across them from a poll on the best paid apps on Kodi. They were like 2nd in the poll, so I wanted to see what they offered. Let me say up front, I believe they have the most content and channels. For less they $60 a year, you get alot of streams. They have streams from all over the world, and I've watched some MMA and a few baseball games. It has all the American sports channels, but I think it has the most amount euro based channels. If not it sure seems that way. Unfortunately, most streams I've tried seems to buffer quite frequently. I did watch a Toronto Blue Jays games on 7/23/16 that seemed to run smoothly. How on earth they were rated so high in that pole is perplexing. They must have stuffed the ballet box like the KC Royals at the MLB All-star game, because SM simply didn't perform up to expectations.
So let's wrap this up shall we? Each service has way more to offer than the current free addons on Kodi, and I depend on them for my streaming. I plan on keeping 2 of them, in case one goes down or forced offline. While I miss having pure 1080P from Dish Network, I don't miss paying the $$$$$ each month. Based on my time with SportsMania, I simply can't recommend it; unless you're into world sports and less American based. It constantly buffers and the HD streams look SD on my TV. Initially for value and service, I thought Sports Donkey for it's price and number of channels. SD is $60 a year while SA is $160, unless you get the black Friday special. The more I considered it, Sports Access is the better service. With all the channels, little to no buffering, and customer support, it edges SD. I like the Donkey, and still watch it a lot. For the linup, customer support, and quality of streams SA has been the best package. I didn't even talk about the members gifts Sports Access gives it subscribers for free. The only knock on Sports Access is that it seems to go down every now and then, but normally for short periods of time. Users on Twitters go ape, because they think they've been had. Then again, we are paying for something that could shut down at anytime. I hope not.
Not sure if this has helped anyone who might be considering subscribing to a Kodi addon, but you can't go wrong with Sports Donkey and Sports Access. If there are better ones out there, please let me know. I'm not playing on going back to cable anytime soon, and I wouldn't mind having better live streaming of channels. I've heard about a couple services, but I'm not ready to fork over the $$$$ for them yet.
XBMC evolved into Gotham, Isengard, Helix, and its now morphed into Kodi; not addon continued. This was the case for my beloved Mashup, because I think around 18 to 24 months ago the developer shut it down. The bulk of my live streaming went down with it, and caused me to research other addons to replace it. I tried so many different free addons, but most of them were just meh. I still to this day can't remember how I stumbled across it, but somehow I found the Hqzone. This started my journey into paid streaming addons for Kodi. They had some 1 week trial I signed up for, and they did have better quality than the free ones. As I seriously thought about subscribing, I research similar addons. I noticed a little Twitter war between the Zone and Sports Access. SA might have been called something else then, but that's what it is now; also found Sports Donkey and later Sports Mania.
So I've board you to death with my journey to this point, so for the rest of my blog I want to compare Sports Access, Sports Donkey, and Sports Mania in terms of product, service, and value. These are only my opinions, but I think you'll find them valid. So I'll start with my the first ever service I committed to Sports Access https://twitter.com/NoBuffZone . The current cost is around $160 dollars a year, but they do offer a Black Friday special around $100 for a 1 year subscription. The service has really evolved from 20 to 30 channels to around 70 at the moment. They have all the big UFC, PPV, and huge sporting events. During football season, they have all the NFL games each week and a huge selection of college games. The same can be said for racing, tennis, golf, MMA, basketball and pro baseball. They have all the major sports channels, and even some regular tv channels: HBO, Showtime, and several other cable channels. They best thing is there's little to no buffering on their streams. I can go the entire even without one hiccup on most occasion. I've been a subscriber for about 20 months, and they've had a few outages from time to time. I think last year they were down for about a month, which lead me to my second service Sports Donkey.
I had read several good reviews about Sports Donkey and with SA down, I decided to try it http://www.sportsdonkey.club/ . For around $60 a year, they have a lot of content and most of the events Sports Access has. They have a huge selection of American sports, but maybe a little more of the Euro stuff with their streams. They too have Showtime, HBO, and all the major sporting events as well. They offer a lot of variety, but their streams will buffer more frequently than SA. I've watched several MLB games and UFC events on it with little issue. Overall, its a great value and they haven't had any outages that I know of. Finally, the last add on I've tried is SportsMania.eu . I came across them from a poll on the best paid apps on Kodi. They were like 2nd in the poll, so I wanted to see what they offered. Let me say up front, I believe they have the most content and channels. For less they $60 a year, you get alot of streams. They have streams from all over the world, and I've watched some MMA and a few baseball games. It has all the American sports channels, but I think it has the most amount euro based channels. If not it sure seems that way. Unfortunately, most streams I've tried seems to buffer quite frequently. I did watch a Toronto Blue Jays games on 7/23/16 that seemed to run smoothly. How on earth they were rated so high in that pole is perplexing. They must have stuffed the ballet box like the KC Royals at the MLB All-star game, because SM simply didn't perform up to expectations.
So let's wrap this up shall we? Each service has way more to offer than the current free addons on Kodi, and I depend on them for my streaming. I plan on keeping 2 of them, in case one goes down or forced offline. While I miss having pure 1080P from Dish Network, I don't miss paying the $$$$$ each month. Based on my time with SportsMania, I simply can't recommend it; unless you're into world sports and less American based. It constantly buffers and the HD streams look SD on my TV. Initially for value and service, I thought Sports Donkey for it's price and number of channels. SD is $60 a year while SA is $160, unless you get the black Friday special. The more I considered it, Sports Access is the better service. With all the channels, little to no buffering, and customer support, it edges SD. I like the Donkey, and still watch it a lot. For the linup, customer support, and quality of streams SA has been the best package. I didn't even talk about the members gifts Sports Access gives it subscribers for free. The only knock on Sports Access is that it seems to go down every now and then, but normally for short periods of time. Users on Twitters go ape, because they think they've been had. Then again, we are paying for something that could shut down at anytime. I hope not.
Not sure if this has helped anyone who might be considering subscribing to a Kodi addon, but you can't go wrong with Sports Donkey and Sports Access. If there are better ones out there, please let me know. I'm not playing on going back to cable anytime soon, and I wouldn't mind having better live streaming of channels. I've heard about a couple services, but I'm not ready to fork over the $$$$ for them yet.
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
Life Is A Blessing But Not Always Easy
Typically, I'm a positive person. As of late, I've had a string of unfortunate events since buying my Sony 4K TV; are they related? Who knows but let's look. So things had been going smoothly until mid January, when I purchased the 65 inch 4k TV. It's great with amazing features and picture quality. Then 9 days after buying it, the first event happen: dish washer pump went out. It was undersized for our family of 6, and after pricing new replacement parts, we decided to get a new one. My lovely wife poured over adds and websites, to find a $450 model on sale for $300. So we spent about $160 more than if we just replaced the pump; problem solved, so time to move on. 10 days later; we were preparing our taxes only to discover we had lost 2 huge deductions. Both of our college aged kids had filled their own returns so we couldn't claim them. At first I went Ape!!!!!! After discussing the matter with HR we accepted our fate of owing $3500.... That hurt. Then less than a week later, gasket seal in dishwasher started leaking $150, minivans alternator out, $140, rack in pinion steering went out on teen's car annuity another $750. It humbling a financial disaster for us the first 4 months of 2016. I feel like a complete loser and this has been a humbling experience. Yet God is still good, and my sufficiency in Christ heavy hasn't changed. This stretch has completely sucked, and things could ALWAYS be worse. To finish off my 😂 post, for the first time in 11 years my Chevy Silverado broke down yesterday & had to be towed: can't wait to see the bill; regardless, it's a great day to be alive!
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